A Homemade Chain Mail Mini Tutorial (yes.)

John Paul is one of those kids that zeroes in on something and it takes over his world. He eats sleeps, breathes, and thinks it until he's understood everything he can on the topic to his satisfaction. He's had a passion this past year for medieval history and warfare. Last summer found him making a huge wooden catapult, trebuchet, and ballista for the yard. (And, I might add, I graciously squelched my inclination to not freak out about the mess or what the neighbors must think). He just finished a huge project of building real metal chain mail and for a few weeks he's been wearing it almost constantly. I love this kid. He wanted to share here about this latest project of his and (checking off history/English/writing/photography/media) I'm letting him. So today, I turn it over to him...

For the past few months I’ve been
working on making a hauberk of chain mail.

It is made entirely out of steel wire
rings.I estimate there are about 6000
rings altogether.After watching a few
videos on YouTube I figured out how it is done. I made the rings by wrapping steel wire around a
wooden dowel with this machine that I made with a few pieces of scrap
wood.

The dowel, which is ⅜ in.
thick, goes in the bigger hole.The wire goes
through a ⅛ in. hole in the side.It is
then bent 90° and pushed into a ⅛ in. hole in the dowel.

I bought the wire from Tractor Supply with money from Christmas. It's 14 gauge galvanized steel electric fence wire that was sold for thirty dollars.

A drill on low power is
attached to the other end of the dowel.As the drill spins, it winds the wire up into a spring.The spring is then slid off the dowel and a
pair of angle cutters is used to cut it up into little rings.Those rings can then be bent and joined together
to form chain mail.

Here’s a video on how I make the rings:{I apologize for poor video quality. It's much clearer on my phone but I'm not sure how to fix that here!}

Putting the rings
together is pretty easy once you get the hang of it.There are many different ways you can do it,
but I start by taking one open ring and
putting two closed rings on it.Then I bend
it closed with pliers and take another open ring and put the two closed rings
on it.Then I put two more closed rings
on it.I continue like this until I have
a chain as long as I want then I take a few of those chains and join them
together with new rings.I was using a
different method but I switched to this method because it was easier.

I had to figure out how to make the correct pieces and them fit them all together to be a hauberk. Here it is completed and laying flat.

The
hauberk is 80 rings tall and 40 wide.I
made it in rows of 8 rings.For the
front I started by making a strip 80 rings long and attaching a strip 64 rings
long to it.Then I attached two more
64-ring strips to it.I made another 80
ring long strip and attached it onto the rest.Finally, I added two triangles.The back was pretty simple since it was just a big rectangle.Here’s a picture of the front divided into the segments that I pieced together.

After joining it all together I have a
complete chainmail hauberk.It took
about a month to make and it is about 15 lbs., though when you have it on it
only feels like 5 lbs.Making medieval
things is one of my favorite hobbies. I’ve wanted to have a suit of
chain mail for a while, but all of the suits online were crazy expensive and too
big.A complete chain mail hauberk can be
over $100 on Amazon.I found by making
my own chain mail I was saving myself a lot of money.I bought a quarter mile (1,320 feet) of wire
for $30 but I only ended up using half of it.

The next project I’m working on is a
rope powered medieval catapult. If you
have any questions about how I made the hauberk, please feel free to leave them
in the comments and I can try to answer them.

17 comments

Very nifty & clever!I made myself a hauberk & coif some years ago, but I didn't make my own rings so it wasn't as economical as what you did. http://ponderedinmyheart.typepad.com/random_interesting_stuff/2008/08/a-little-postie.htmlYe should make a coif with the rest of your wire!

That would be really neat! A book I read recently said that armor wasn't actually as heavy as many people think it is and that knights weren't actually winched onto their horses. It said many knights even practiced jumping into the saddle without touching their horses! A knight's armor was actually only as heavy as a modern infantryman's combat uniform. Although winches may have been used later after guns were invented because armor had to be made thicker and heavier to stop bullets.

Well done John Paul!! Extremely impressive!!Truly you could be a younger brother of my three oldest lads, they've been making chain mail for years, sent them your link, I'm sure they'll enjoy it.You've taken me back down memory lane remembering when they used to make medieval weapons too.Keep on creating! :-)

Oh my! Years ago my boys made a catapult and their mates made a trebuchet. Lots of fun. But the blacksmithing is taking it up way several notches!! Recently one of our homeschool dads here went to an auction and unexpectedly found and bid on a whole blacksmithing forge, tools etc! He's rather chuffed.

I had a reply from one of my lads about your post. X (19) says "I love it, he did a really good job on getting the links to all be the same direction as that is one of the hardest parts, do you know how old he is? Is he the same age as when we did it do you think?"

Most impressed! We are indeed blessed to live in Australia, I'm certain you would have lots to discuss with my boys. I'll see if I can find some photos in my archives of their weapons and email to you, though I didn't take as many photos then.

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